There’s a special election in Georgia’s 6th district on April 18, 2017 to fill the seat of Tom Price, who resigned on February 10 to become Secretary of HHS. In the event that nobody wins a majority of the vote on April 18, a runoff would be held on June 20.
Thought we might should have a place to chat about this race, so here it is.
Wikipedia pages for the 6th district and for the special election. It’s on the north side of Atlanta, which is pretty conservative territory, and it’s got a Cook PVI of R+12, so it’s a longshot for the Dems.
I remember reading somewhere recently that Hillary lost the district by only 48-47, but I can’t find it now, and my Google-fu can’t seem to find Presidential votes by CD. If that’s true, it would suggest that maybe this race isn’t such a long shot at all, if the Dems are more mobilized than the R’s.
I assume that Soros has already purchased the coaches to bus us all over to vote, but then again, since I have not received my per diem for the days I spent at marches, maybe I should not assume.
I remember reading somewhere recently that Hillary lost the district by only 48-47, but I can’t find it now, and my Google-fu can’t seem to find Presidential votes by CD. If that’s true, it would suggest that maybe this race isn’t such a long shot at all, if the Dems are more mobilized than the R’s
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I find that hard to believe. Price won the district by over 23%.
My underlining. No numbers in the AJC article, so no verification of 48-47 per se, but obviously very close.
The piece I was reading that I got the 48-47 from, said that none of Price’s opponents in the past few cycles had had more than a few thousand dollars to spend, and usually not even into four figures. Meanwhile, Price had plenty of money to run a campaign with. So of course you’re going to wind up with diverging numbers.
But on the other side, the Dem challenger had Trump to encourage Dem voter turnout for the Presidential. Do you think extra money is really going to get out the Dems in a special election in a heavily Republican district? ISTM, that if the Presidential vote in the district was that close then a bunch of Price voters broke party lines and voted Hillary. Can we really expect them to show up to vote a Democrat congressman in?
Or a bunch of Hillary voters also voted for Price because they’d never so much as heard the other guy’s name. Who knows?
The facts are that in a race where both candidates were well known, Trump edged Hillary only narrowly. And in a race where the GOP’s House candidate was a widely known incumbent and the Dem challenger’s campaign barely had a pulse, the GOP guy won by 25. Make of that what you will. For now, I was just trying to provide the basic facts.
The GA Dem party has been beaten down over years and years of defeats. In many districts they don’t field a competitive candidate partly because they know the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against them. Why beat the bushes t find a good candidate, spend the time and effort to run a strong campaign if all that just means you lose by 15 points versus the 25 points you lose by without expending any efforts.
But that is beginning to change in the suburbs. I’m in the district just to the east of the district being discussed here. In Nov 16, our state representative seat was open. It had been a solid red seat for as long as I’ve lived here, 20+ years. So, in November, it was a surprise that we elected not only a Democrat, but an Asian-American, to the seat. Also, my county actually voted for Hilary by a 2% margin. Unthinkable a few elections ago.
All this to say, I hope they find a strong candidate to field to replace Price. There is hope.
The filing deadline was today. The filing window was only three days. Things should neck down soon once we know he really filed but there was a story on the first day of filing.
it looks like the Democrats mostly rooted through the dumpster of discarded candidates. the most recently experienced hasn’t held office since leaving a state legislature slot in 2005. The other lost his last race in 1996. Then there’s the one who worked as a congressional aide. Republicans have a pretty strong field with a number of current state legislators and a few that have won state wide elections.
As a NotTrump republican I have an early interest in Mohammad Ali Bhuiyan - a muslim who’s an economist. He’s kind of the giant middle finger candidate for a district Trump lost in the primary.
This is my district so I’m certainly following this with interest. Unfortunately - none of the Democratic candidates inspire tremendous amounts of confidence. However, there is a group of like-minded liberals that are trying to build some energy for the Democratic side of the ticket. In fact, I’ll be meeting Jon Ossoff sometime in the next 2 weeks, and will share whatever I learn from that. We’re trying to set up meetings with the other Democratic candidates as well - but the response has been somewhat less than encouraging. I don’t have a lot of (or any) hands on experience with grass roots politics - but I would think these candidates would be thrilled at the prospect of meeting energized and enthusiastic potential voters. But what do I know . . . .
Josh Marshall did have a good post on this election the other day, which makes it seem like a long shot, but one with at least a heartbeat.
Short version, just with names; go to the link for details.
Republicans: Karen Handel, David Abroms, Mohammad Ali Bhuiyan, Bob Gray, Keith Grawert, Judson Hill, Amy Kremer, Bruce LeVell, William Llop, Dan Moody, Kurt Wilson.
Democrats: Jon Ossoff, Ragin Edwards, Richard Keatley, Rebecca Quigg, Ron Slotin.
Independents: Alexander Hernandez, Andre Pollard.
Notably not running: Republican Betty Price, Democrat Sally Harrell.
Ed Kilgore has a good piece on the race. He’s a Georgia boy, and knows the territory well.
His basic take is that Georgia Dems have a lousy record of showing up for special elections, runoffs, and the like, so it’s very much the GOP’s race to lose.
My take is that the local Dems have two months to prove whether the changes seemingly happening all over this country, with center-left types suddenly waking up and getting involved, are happening in Georgia just as much as anywhere. If so, it’s a horse race, despite the R+12. If not, it’s an easy win for the Republican.
I don’t have a ‘just the facts’ mission. You seemed to think that I was expressing opinions, though, at an earlier point in the thread where I was just trying to provide facts.
And I’m not sure what sort of ‘wishful thinking’ you’re talking about. I think I’ve made it clear that I don’t know whether this race will be competitive.
In this short thread, you have repeatedly read things into my words that aren’t there. I can’t stop you from being that sort of poster, but I will confess I’m already finding it tiresome.
There has been talk for several years now that changing demographics will put Georgia in play for the Democrats, but it never seems to happen. Even in 2014 when the Ds ran a couple of high profile names (admittedly through their grandfather and father) in Jason Carter and Michelle Nunn, they were soundly beaten.
District 6 looks to be a bit of DeKalb (D), a bit of Cobb (normally R, but went for Hillary, probably because of anti-Trump vote rather than Democrat gains), and lots of North Fulton (solidly R). The Democrats don’t have a chance.
An interesting piece of the wide Republican field is that this could shape up to be a big internal Republican fight as well. Besides barely beating Clinton, Trump lost the district to Rubio. It’s not Trump friendly. He’s got the not so metaphorical bully pulpit to use against any GOP candidate that runs to openly towards what the district wants in a Republican though. Just on the right this could come down to a pretty brutal referendum on his administration.
The special election rules could help a Democrat (assuming they don’t split widely in their field.) If a Trump backer survives to a runoff against the Democrat, this is the kind of district that just might not want to send the Trump supporter to Washington. The wide field may hurt the GOP ability to keep that situation from coming up. Hmmm where did we see see more establishment candidates split the majority of the vote leaving them out of the next round before?
I have no data to back this up - but from living in the district there is a very different feel to the politics lately. For the last decade plus, you could count on Republicans bringing up politics in the most random of conversations. Somehow - they would find a way to criticize Democrats, in even the most benign of topics. But ever since Trump became the nominee, that seems to have changed. Even my most rabidly right wing friends and acquaintances rarely bring up politics now. Frankly, it’s one (or the only) hidden benefit of the Trump victory - I don’t have to deal with the random drive-by slam of Obama, Democrats, or Liberals in general. It seems to speak to a dramatic reduction in the passion or fervor that Republicans bring to the table.
I only bring this up because it may be a factor in the upcoming election. It’s a lot harder to bring out the vote, to instill passion, to get people motivated, when they may not embrace the standard bearer for their own party. Could this be enough to turn the tide of this election? Frankly I doubt it. But every little bit helps.
2014 was a bit of a Republican wave year even in less Republican parts of the country. And having the right name can help you, but it can’t work miracles.
Just for fun, I looked at the last five Presidential elections, to see how much more Republican Georgia voted than the nation at large. The gap is closing, but it’s still big:
Year (Georgia R margin) - (national R margin)
2000 12.2
2004 14.1
2008 12.5
2012 11.7
2016 7.2
Even if the gap keeps closing, the Dems will win Georgia in 2020 only if it’s a much better than average Democratic year nationwide.
A special election like this one is, of course, a whole different thing from a Presidential election. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but the one thing we know for sure is that the voters in this special election won’t be anything like a representative sample of the 2016 voters in this district.
It’s all about who’s motivated to show up on April 18 and almost surely June 20. The number of voters will be much smaller than it was in November, so each side has enough supporters in the district to win, if they show up.
I’ll be meeting Jon Ossoff, Democratic candidate for the 6th, on Monday March 6th. If anyone has any questions for him, feel free to post and I’ll try to bring them up. It should be a small group, in the home of one of my neighbors.
I’ll plan to have a bunch of questions ready - but I’ll definitely be curious about the challenges of running as a Democrat in such a right-leaning area.